The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Anthony Bass

Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.

When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.

This time, I’m taking a look at Padres swingman Anthony Bass.

Anthony Bass was never seen as much of a prospect, so his 1.68 ERA in 48 1/3 innings as a rookie comes as quite a surprise. It is, then, less of a surprise to see that the 23-year-old righthander walked nearly as many batters (21) as he struck out (24), and posted a 4.21 FIP. In 15 innings as a starter, he walked seven and struck out just four, but he allowed only two runs.

The reality is that Bass is likely to come crashing back down to earth next season, as neither statistics nor scouting reports back up that the notion that he’s the sort of pitcher who can post excellent ERA numbers.

That said, he was an acceptable relief pitcher as a rookie, and he’ll likely improve as he settles in. That leaves two questions: 1) how much he can improve and 2) if he can become a starter.

One of the surprises with Bass is that his fastball averaged 93.3 mph this season. As you might expect, he throws harder as a reliever than a starter, but he’s still thrown 90-95 as a starter, averaging 92.78 mph. He was on a pitch count in his starts, so if he was on a more conventional longer leash, his average might dip to somewhere between 92.0 and 92.5, but Bass is definitively not a finesse pitcher. As a reliever, he sits at 93-94 mph and touches 96, which is quite impressive. Let’s look at his fastball locations to righties and lefties:

It doesn’t come as a particularly big surprise that Bass pounds the outer half to batters from both sides. His fastball does have some late cut to it, and it seems something of a waste for him to not pound the inner part of the plate to lefties, however. A few of his fastballs got classified as “cutters,” and he did tend to throw those inside:

Oddly, though, Bass fastball (“cutter” included) got a higher swinging strike rate against lefties (5.6%) than righties (3.9%). It also went for a strike more often to lefties (65.5%) than righties (62.7%), including more called strikes (16.9% to 15.9%). Is it any wonder that his FIP to lefties (3.69) was nearly a run lower than his FIP to righties (4.60)?

Actually, that is surprising, because Bass’ money pitch is a plus slider that has given righties all sorts of trouble. He’s thrown it about 35% of the time, including about 40% to righties. Of his 168 sliders to righties, 33 (19.64%) have been swung on and missed, which is a stellar total. He throws the pitch almost exclusively away to righties, but he’s not simply getting a bunch of chases in the dirt:

With the fastball and slider, Bass could be an interesting late-game reliever, no question. He doesn’t really pound the bottom of the zone with either pitch, but he still gets a respectable groundball rate (46%), and that’s plenty to be viable when pitching half your games in Petco Park.

Why, then, has he walked more righties (15) than he’s struck out (14)? Well, we’ve established that his fastball doesn’t boast tremendous effectiveness to them, which can be attributed to the fact that he never brings it inside and also to its lack of armside run–it cuts glove-side, which makes it tougher on lefties. The slider has also gone for strikes just 56.5% of the time to righties, so it seems that most of the whiffs are on sliders in the zone and that batters are actually laying off the balls.

Bass also is somewhat predictable as an almost exclusively two-pitch pitcher to righthanders. He’ll throw more and more sliders if he gets ahead in the count, but he’ll go almost exclusively with the fastball on 2-0 or 3-1 counts. It’s no surprise that batters are hitting .363 off him on the first pitch, or that he’s allowed all three of his home runs on no-strike counts. He also allowed a .614 OBP on three-ball counts, higher than the .562 MLB average.

You might think that Bass would wilt against lefties, since sliders tend to have a strong platoon split, and indeed, his breaking ball’s effectiveness is diminished, going for a strike just 55.3% of the time and drawing a 12.9% whiff rate. However, Bass shows a surprisingly effective changeup. He’s only thrown 41, but eight have drawn whiffs, for a 19.5% rate that’s nearly identical to that of the slider against righties. Here’s a quick look at where he puts the slider to lefties:

And the changeup:

Clearly, Bass works the outside of the plate with all three pitches to lefthanders. He doesn’t seem to have much of a place to put the slider, so he scatters the zone with an emphasis on backdooring the pitch. He pounds the zone more with his changeup (63.4% strikes), fading it toward the outside of the plate. He gets very good sink on the change, which he throws about 10 mph slower than the fastball, and its armside run is a big contrast to his fastball’s cut, which explains why lefties have such trouble with it.

With the fastball/change duo to lefties and the slider to righties, Bass makes more sense as a starter in than a reliever in the long-term–there aren’t any hitters he really needs to be “shielded” from, so until he proves incapable of holding down a rotation spot, he should start.

Ultimately, though, the pitcher seems to be a very good example of why we shouldn’t just rely on scouting reports and hearsay when judging prospects. Bass looks to have a very solid and effective array of pitches, but few analysts credited him as being above-average in anything as a prospect. Baseball America said his fastball was “90-92 mph” before the year and characterized his breaking ball as a “slider/cutter” when it’s actually a big-breaking slider, almost a slurve, in the 83-86 range, 8-10 mph slower than his fastball. Bass looks to be much better than that, and has a chance to be a solid innings-eating third or fourth starter or an impact late-game reliever.

For more on the Padres, check out Chicken Friars.

Follow us on Twitter: Nathaniel (@stoltz_baseball), Wally (@thebaseballfish) and James (@JAYRC_MCB). You can also keep up to date with all things S2S by liking our Facebook page.